IMHO

How Can Americans Be So Stupid?

Of course, that's an easy one to answer. In fact, Bush answered it himself, over and over...No Child Left Behind. As a people, Americans have been too long convinced of their own superiority to let it go. Bush appeals to that very side of Americans that makes us so unpopular as tourists--the "ugly American" syndrome. The country looks ugly to me today, regardless of the lovely fall foliage out my window.

And yet, that foliage is a reminder, too, of the fact that those who opposed this putrid blight of an administration must not allow it to defeat them.

When I lived in Austin, I had two lovely post oaks outside my house. The people who owned the house previously had mis-graded the property, and eventually large fungal growths started popping out at the base of the trees and even out fom the limbs like huge, fetid mushrooms.

The tree people explained that the problem was "root rot". The trees were dying from the inside; the mushrooms were just the first visible signs of the cancer inside the trunks. I had two choices: Cut down the trees or spend time, money and effort to save them.

America is older and hardier than my two post oaks (which survived their root rot), but the blight is also more pervasive. Those of us who want to see this country remain standing cannot give up just because another fungus pops out. We have to continue to prune, to re-train the soil and the water flow, to aerate the land, to expose the fungus to air and light, to give regular feedings and innoculations, and, most of all, to educate, so that those who come after us can care for the land and her people in order to prevent the recurrence of the disease beneath the surface.

Posted by adept at November 3, 2004 01:58 PM